Samantha's piece 'Time Heals All Wounds' gave the Summer 2019 issue of NUNUM a centre, everything else in the issue sprang from it. So you can imagine how thankful we were to have her with us.

By night and early morning, Samantha N. Simpson writes fiction and nonfiction pieces, some of which have appeared in Kenyon Review, Exhuming Alexandria, Crazyhorse, REAL, and Prism Review. By day, she teaches high school English in the Boston area and leads summer workshops for the Young Writers at Kenyon Program. She lives in Reading, MA, with her husband and small collection of withering houseplants.

​As novelist Zora Neal Hurston so beautifully stated: “There are years that ask questions and years that answer.”
​
“What if I don’t ever return to school?” I remember bemoaning on a fast-food run with my best friend, also age 22. That was my key question, and deepest fear, that year.

The Beginning
    Every once in a while it hits me that I’m almost done with the first year of my Ph. D. in Creative Writing at a school that people have actually heard of and one that has a decent reputation. Earlier this week, I had a memory pop up on my social media account that said: “ONE YEAR AGO TODAY:” followed by a post I wrote declaring my commitment to Oklahoma State University. For someone who never expected to go to 

We couldn't have been happier with the Spring 2019 issue for oh so many reasons but way up on the top of that list was having the chance to give Marselienna her first publication with her piece "L.E.D.".

The brevity of the voice and depth of the voice Marselienna brought to life in "L.E.D" is a paradigm of what a great piece of flash fiction can do.

Jordan Faber dreamt up the words, Daniel Ciochina clicked the pics and we blended it into an homage to the grand-daddy of all hustles, the Three Card Monty. 

'Oklahoma '86' is a raw, tight, slice of life roll through a moment most tag as life-changing. Jordan's piece though reminds us all that in the end it usually all comes back to feet up on the dashboard moments and treasures the color of seaweed. 

Charles Finn slipped us a poetically voiced piece of flash fiction for our Spring 2019 issue called 'Giant Heart'. This thoughtful story was a must have for our issue as it captured the honesty and reflection often found in shared out of step gestures of intimacy.  Luckily for us Dave Sims had just given us 'Don't Eat Your Little Buddies' and once we got done blending ... 

NUNUM's first issue of 2019 was fortunate enough to include three private images from Daniel Ciochina. Together his three pieces became the cards that revealed the words of Jordan Faber and together they became the opening story for our Spring 2019 issue 'Oklahoma '86'. 

Should you get an MFA? Only you can answer that question, based on your goals, life situation, and what particular programs might offer you.
But should you pay for an MFA? There’s a question that’s sure to spark a heated conversation. Many, well-known writers (and plenty of lesser known ones) will tell you flat out that no, you should never, pay for an MFA.

A retired educator, Dave Sims now dwells and creates in the mountains of central Pennsylvania. His most recent comix appear in The Nashville Review, Talking Writing, and Freeze Ray, and panels from his digital painting sequence “Somewhere Around the Edges,” appear on the cover and in the Winter 2019 issue of The Raw Art Review. You can find Dave on instagram at tincansims
Dave lent us a few of his pieces for the ...

SQF: Why did you start this magazine?

NUNUM focuses on blending flash fiction with visual art to produce a work which while faithful to both parents is, as all offspring are, unique unto itself. 

This is all we publish, and we do it in order to further explore the idea that both the words of a flash fiction piece and the elements of an image don't exist in a vacuum. A reader's mind isn't blank, it is full of clusters of